


Said the Tall, Spanish Male

by patxaran



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance, by Spanish I mean of Spain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7556995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patxaran/pseuds/patxaran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seeing some fics when I first got into HxH refer to Leorio as a "Spanish male" slowly drove me insane, so I wrote this. Here is my "Leorio is kinda Spanish and kinda Italian" AU. Learn about the distant land of Italiberia, which is the prospective name I've given this cultural gray area between Spain, Italy, and the HxH World where the story is set. </p><p>Pairing-wise, it's your standard Leopika fare. Because I ship them to the moon and back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. E gira tutt'intorno la stanza mentre si pranza, pranza

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I don't own Hunter x Hunter, and I make no money from this, good god. No-one would pay for this.
> 
>  **Notes:** I used to live in a small town in northern Spain and traveled between there and one microscopic village in Italy over and over, so that's the life experience I've had that informs this story. If anything is wrong or different from your experience, then just shrug and tell yourself that this is Italiberia, and Italiberia isn't really 100-percent Spain or Italy, but something in between and also a little apart, because this AU is still in the HxH universe. Hunters exist and stuff.
> 
> ALSO, this fic was inspired by the fact that some of the backgrounds in the manga and anime are literally Italy. While watching the 2011 anime, even the Italian dude sitting next to me (who was the person who originally forced me to watch HxH in the first place) kept commenting "hey, this looks like Italy..." over and over and over. We spent way too much of Yorkshin or whatever commenting on all the food like "wait, are those guys eating paella?" and "man, I think you can order that exact same plate of sandwichs in VIPS [a Spanish restaurant chain] right now...".

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Leorio gets drunk while eating lunch when he meets Kurapika for the first time. And that's about it, really.

The weakest of morning light filtered in from the chasm that connected the patio on the first floor to the distant sky above. Only at midday could any direct sunlight enter, illuminating one wide section of the wall that burned brightly and blindingly for less than an hour, and then returned to shade. It was like living along the walls of a deep well, but instead of any water at the bottom, there was orange tile over concrete with a drain in the middle that prevented rainwater from collecting. It was into this drain the porter poured out the washing water after he mopped the common floors of the vestibule and landings on Thursdays. It was also where his teenage daughter disposed of the cigarettes she smoked when her father was away.

Most of the time, Leorio didn't mind having a bedroom that faced inside rather than to the street. It had the benefit of being a bit quieter, filled more with the clinking of plates, dinner conversation, and the generic household sounds of his neighbors going about their days. The street his apartment opened up to on its other end was busy and deafening in its abundance of automobiles, its heavy heeled and hurried pedestrians, and the boisterous patrons of the popular bar below chatting loudly over the street's noise with their companions.

The inwards facing window also escaped contact with direct sunlight, making the air that came in from there, although it could be stuffy on rare humid days, cooler than the air from the outfacing rooms. In the height of summer every small reprieve from the heat was a bonus in Leorio's book, and in order to take full advantage of it, he made sure to rise especially early to open all the windows and exchange the stale air inside the apartment for the cooler air found further down between buildings. By noon it would be as if he'd done nothing at all, but at noon he could sleep through the worst of it.

Sleeping, however, had become something of a luxury these days. Rarely leaving his apartment as his medical school exams grew closer and closer, Leorio had learned he possessed two very specific, home-based super powers: surviving the heat of summer trapped indoors without air conditioning and surviving terrible coffees. Every fancy espresso machine he'd seen in every home he'd visited had been broken, and so he hadn't been able to justify the cost of springing for one. Therefore, it was the stovetop moka pot for him, because even a short, black coffee, when purchased daily in the bar downstairs, was too much of a splurge. Cheap coffee, six little ceramic cups worth to be reheated throughout the day, was simply more economical than any other option. The taste perhaps degraded by the hour as it was left out, but the caffeine content sure as hell didn't, and when one was on a budget, one had to stack one's priorities into an efficient and exact hierarchy separating those mere frills. like taste, from true necessities, like utility.

It was six in the morning now, soon after waking, and one such terrible pot of coffee was currently underway. The birds in the street seemed to have gotten louder over the past few weeks. He could hear them singing clearly from the open door of the street-facing balconet as if they were in the kitchen with him. Further up the block, in the small, dark, virtually enclosed Plaza of Three Corners, they'd made nests in the façade of what had once been an opulent private residence and was now divided into apartments and offices, most of which were vacant.

Yet, from the column of empty space rising up from the dark interior patio, even louder than the shrill songs of the songbirds, was the droning sound of roosting pigeons. They were living in some niche higher above Leorio's bedroom window where he couldn't see them looking out. He heard them cooing throughout the morning and the violent rustling of wings as each took flight, but he never saw them directly. They were like grunting ghosts, struggling to take the largest shits of their lives, and yet some people apparently found the noise they made relaxing. It was a sound that was torturous in being just repetitive enough to block out while going about one's daily activities, and yet infuriating when one was trying to focus or study, which was how Leorio occupied the majority of his time.

Leorio hated those pigeons. He hated them like he hated his own poverty, a perpetual reminder of the futility of good deeds, human kindness, and intelligence when all you were ever going to get was your clothes shit on when you hung them out to dry on the line. The porter and his landlord couldn't do anything; the pigeons were in the vacant building next door, so it may as well have been that they were on Mars for all anyone could do about them. Only money could save Leorio from this. With money he could move out to a less pigeon infested domicile, perhaps even one with a "real" patio and not the glorified drain at the bottom of an air shaft three floors below like he had now. A patio that sunlight might actually enter so it wouldn't be so dreary and dim in the back of the apartment at the start and end of each day.

After the small pleasure of watching the first stream of coffee rise up in the moka pot, Leorio shut the lid and went to rinse the same cup he used every day. On a plate in the oven there was still a quarter of a cake wrapped in tin foil that his elderly neighbor had brought him as an excuse to invite herself in and gossip about the new occupant of the third apartment on her floor. Leorio was a patient listener and an outgoing neighbor, which attracted the old women in his building to him like buzzards encircling a nice young man to set their single female family members up with. In this way, Leorio ended up invited to lunch and dinner more times than he could count, and it was never just him and his host, but also a girl he didn't know around the table. He was always polite during the meal. If the girl was beautiful, he was downright charming. But, no-one who knew firsthand what a shit building Leorio lived in along with their grandmother or great aunt would ever seriously date him. Even the attractive aspect of being a guy who didn't live at home with his parents was cancelled out, since, thanks to thin walls and the conduit of sound that was the air shaft rising up seven stories, grandma might overhear an intimate moment in Leorio's bedroom channeled up to her, and then drop instantly dead of righteous mortification when she recognized her precious grandchild's voice.

The old lady who'd brought the cake had also come bearing an invitation to lunch that Leorio hadn't been able to find a way to wriggle out of. She would make lamb with lemon sauce, and hadn't he once said he liked borage? She'd already got some lamb from her grandson in the country, and tomorrow she'd braise it and make a hearty lunch. She was old, she insisted; she only knew how to make portions fit for her once massive family of ten children. She needed a young man to help her eat some of the food so it wouldn't go to waste. Did he also like savarin, by chance?

Leorio sighed sleepily and pinched off mouthfuls of cake as he waited for the coffee to finish percolating. He was going to have to shower twice today, wasn't he? He'd put too much garlic in the rice at dinner last night. Why did he even have to leave the apartment in such a state? Whoever the grandma upstairs was aiming to introduce him to, it was already futile because Leorio stank of yesterday's garlic and onion rice seeping out his pores.

Leorio poured himself a coffee and returned to his room to study. The pigeons were waking with the feeble rays of the sun over the rooftops, and he could hear them stirring and murmuring pigeon nonsense in breathy coos to each other. He'd have to study extra today to make up for the time wasted at lunch. He'd probably come home tipsy from a heavy amazzacaffè and a rum soaked savarin, which meant today was already shot as far as making any sort of real progress was concerned. Oh well. Time to salvage the few hours he had left and learn some medicine.

Leorio sighed. He sipped the coffee carefully, as it was still fresh and searing hot, and wished that there were someone around to bring him his coffees instead. Sadly, no-one was going to bring coffees to the loser at this desk. Not until he got that medical degree. Not until he wasn't poor and useless. So, not any fucking time soon, then. Not for a fucking good while.

* * *

Leorio wasn't so sure what to make of the guest at lunch. The old woman, Lorsinetta, or Netta as she preferred Leorio refer to her, seemed to believe that her neighbor was a bright young woman. Leorio could clearly, instantly tell it was a young man, but he wasn't sure how to bring this up in a way that was even close to polite, especially because, knowing Netta, she'd argue with him. Netta was never wrong, and Netta always kept it that way.

It didn't help that the man wore something like a dress, or that his name, Kurapika, sounded like it might belong to a foreign woman, or at least a vodka drink a foreign woman might order and then have to explain to the bartender how to make. Netta pronounced it to Leorio in an overly cute way, like she'd named her little apartment dog this new thing to match its tiny, adorable face to the shrill sound that emerged from its throat when it dared to attempt a bark and ended up making a sound more akin to disconcerting, dog-ish shrieking instead. Leorio politely feign having missed the name and asked Kurapika to repeat it for him so he could get it right. Leorio then recited the name loudly as Netta plodded past them towards the sideboard to bring out a tray of preliminary snacks. He hoped she would hear it said correctly, subtlety catch on, and thus finally stop chirping it so bizarrely. So far, though, no such luck.

Leorio hurried to take the tray from Netta, despite how much she insisted he didn't need to, and set it down on the table close to Kurapika. Netta took only a stuffed olive and then excused herself so she could heat up the lamb in lemon sauce that she'd made in advance. Leorio took his designated seat next to Kurapika, shooting him a short, bemused smile before reaching for a plate of cockles that was across from him. Netta had just opened and drained the can as Leorio'd arrived, but had forgot to season the contents. Leorio took the initiative.

"So, you've just moved here?" asked Leorio. He checked if the vinegar in the dispenser was white or red before dousing the cockles in it.

"Yes, a week ago," said Kurapika. He looked uncertainly between the small plates of food on the tray in front of him, as if trying to decode some sort of encryption written in the order in which they were arranged. Some sort of hint as to where to even start. Leorio placed the cockles between them and offered Kurapika a toothpick from a canister.

"Why here?" asked Leorio. He stabbed a few cockles with his toothpick to demonstrate for the clearly mystified Kurapika how to eat them. He stabbed a pale, stuffed olive next, and hoped Kurapika enjoyed the flavors of brine and fish, because Netta hadn't put out anything more substantial than these two things and a plate of potato chips. Leorio was thirsty for a drink already, and could hear the clinking of ice and glass in the kitchen. He hoped this noise preluded some libation, perhaps a light beer or a vermouth. The sound of lemon being sliced and no cans or bottles opening confirmed it was going to be vermouth. Netta wanted to get this tiny man, Kurapika, good and drunk, didn't she? With such light food and deep drinks, it wasn't likely to turn out any other way.

"I came here for work," said Kurapika as he mimicked Leorio and stabbed an olive with an admirable two jabs only before finally catching it. Leorio considered the olives a logical choice for Kurapika. Cockles were pretty good, and this brand was known for being rather outstanding despite its low price range, but they probably looked like something terrible and strange to the uninitiated. Maybe Netta should've freehanded some random peppers or a colorful spice to toss them with and paint them a more appetizing shade for the eyes, although even then they still might've been a tough sell. A whole rainbow of condiments couldn't overcome the cockles dull color, alien shape, and weirdly wrinkled texture. People often had no problem eating that kind of thing warm, directly from its shell, but removing it from the shell and packing in a can made it gross. So, whatever. Kurapika was missing out.

"You work here?" asked Leorio. "Or are you looking for work? I'm sorry if it's the second one. Good luck."

"I work in an office north of here," said Kurapika. He elaborated on this without prompting, apparently eager to discuss something as banal as the details of his job, as if all office jobs weren't inherently boring and terrible conversation topics in all cultures. "Some logistics stuff right now, but in general you could say I work on procurement of recourses, identifying and negotiating with suppliers, that kind of thing. I look for the stuff my company tells me it wants, and then I get it to them. It's not very interesting to laymen, but I find it to be rewarding. I was reassigned here to function as a liaison with a local supplier, recently hired. There've been some problems on their end. The contract might not be renewed."

"What do they supply that's so important?" asked Leorio, more interested in skewering four cockles at once than he was in Kurapika's answer.

"Books. Rare books."

"Cool," said Leorio blankly. It wasn't cool at all. "How do you like this town?" he asked to change the subject. "I have to warn you, if Netta asks, only say nice things about it, okay? She might complain how it's all gone downhill and stuff, but she's old, so she's allowed to. Even if you agree with her, just keep it to yourself. Do good, make a nice impression, and you'll be rich with cakes and home-cooked meals at least once a week from here on out."

Kurapika looked down at the cockles as if unsure that whatever meals Netta might provide him with were something he particularly wanted. "I'm not sure I've really formed an opinion either way about this place," he admitted. "A week isn't long enough to get an idea. I've mostly just gone from here to work and back."

"Even better. Netta will be thrilled to tell you absolutely everything," said Leorio, laughing. "She's always looking for an ear. Right, Netta?" he asked as the old woman reappeared in the kitchen doorway with ice-filled glasses, a bottle of vermouth, and two cans of soda, one lemon and one a bright red, bitter apertivo. Leorio tilted his head curiously at the sodas, and she motioned towards Kurapika with them as she placed them on the table.

"Kurapika doesn't drink," said Netta, like she still couldn't believe it even as she said it.

"Never?" asked Leorio, surprised, as he turned to Kurapika. "You've got to be at least eighteen, right? Twenty? There's no way you're fifteen."

"I'm nineteen," said Kurapika. "So, I'm underage."

"Not in this country you are," said Leorio. There was a hint of pride in his voice as he shared the information. "You'd have been drinking for three or four years already."

"I don't think I should drink," said Kurapika, grabbing the nearer of the two sodas and opening it. He began to pour it carefully into his prepared glass of ice. "It's okay. I like this…red stuff. Whatever it is."

"Is it because you're scared?" asked Leorio bluntly.

"I'm not scared. It's just—"

"Because don't worry, you're safe with Netta and me. We'll look out for you. We won't let you get in trouble. You can trust us."

"I just don't care to drink right now," said Kurapika. His face was gradually turning as red as the beverage in his hand in embarrassment.

"At least take some wine with lunch. Mix it with a lemon soda, and you won't even feel a touch of it," said Netta, clearly of the mind that Kurapika needed a drink. His reticent nature and rigid posture weren't helping matters. It was astounding to her that someone was nearly twenty and had never drunk, not even a clandestine sip out of sight of adults. Leorio knew it was possible, because he knew about the stringent drinking laws in other countries, but even for him, it remained kind of hard to believe that someone from one of those countries wouldn't immediately start drinking at the first free chance they got. What were all of the destructively drunk tourists downtown near the beach testament to if not that fact?

"Fine, but just a little," said Kurapika. He was too well embarrassed now to argue and certain he didn't have a good excuse that would convince Netta anyway. She'd been pestering him to have a vermouth thinned with seltzer since he'd arrived for lunch.

Netta seemed strangely satisfied with herself now, and once more disappeared into the kitchen to stir the lamb dish that resisted all the warming effects of the heat that had supposedly been applied to it so far. Leorio was extremely aware of this game. She was trying to give them time to relax and talk candidly, to get to know each other without her getting in the way, because she believed Kurapika was a girl and that Leorio had a chance.

"I'll pour the wine," said Leorio quietly as Netta walked away. "She's a bit heavy handed, and she might 'accidentally' pour you more than I'm sure you'd want, and then she'll guilt you into drinking it anyway. You can't win that argument with her."

"Thank you," said Kurapika, and it was genuine.

"Just make sure to fill your stomach with food, and get started on that bitter soda now, so the volume will help dilute the alcohol in your stomach," advised Leorio wisely. "You'll still absorb it, but it will be gradual, and you won't have problems. You're small and you're saying you've never drunk before, so I can't promise you won't feel the alcohol a little bit, but I'll fend Netta off if she tries to pressure you into drinking more."

"Why is she serious about this?" asked Kurapika in bewilderment, though keeping his voice down. "Is this normal?"

"It's because you look super stressed out and stiff, and I think she thinks you need to chill out," said Leorio. He picked up the glass Netta had poured him by the rim with the tips of his fingers and began to rock it back and forth so that the ice shifted position. The scent of aromatic herbs and lemon rose up and filled his nose with its faint, boozy perfume. Kurapika had been smart to turn the drink down for a soda. Even watered down, it would've been a supremely drunken lunch for him if he'd started off on that particular, spirtuous foot.

"I'm not very stressed at all," said Kurapika quietly, as if to himself only. Surprisingly, Leorio believed him. That didn't change the fact that Kurapika looked immensely uncomfortable just by the unconscious arrangement of the features on his face. It was a shame, because the features by their own merits were actually quite nice in spite of the fact that Kurapika wore them all wrong. Kurapika was an uncommonly pretty man when one looked past that grim, gray cloud of unbecoming solemnity suspended in place above him. This explained in part Netta's half-blind confusion over his gender. And again, the dress or whatever it was he wore wasn't helping.

Leorio briefly considered telling Kurapika that Netta thought he was a girl, and that she perhaps thought, not too distantly, that he should give a nice young man like her neighbor Leorio a chance. The more Leorio sipped his drink, however, the more he decided it would be hilarious not to say anything at all. Perhaps it was some bibulous devil on his shoulder giggling drunkenly behind its glass and suggesting, hardly able to spit out the words as it thought them through, "hey, hey, Leo, dude, you know… _you know what would be funny_?" and then collapsing into a side-aching, raucous plea of laughter in anticipation of how hilarious this suggestion would be without even telling Leorio what it was yet. This lunch was bound to take hours, and right here was a golden opportunity for Leorio to amuse himself throughout it. It was best to take that opportunity and see what came out of it.

"What do you do?" asked Kurapika.

Leorio shook his head disapprovingly and took a deeper drink. It was the first question Kurapika had asked Leorio about himself so far, and it was about work. Kurapika must've come from one of those countries where they classified people and related to them based on their jobs. In that case, Leorio was about to define himself with what counted as little more than a hesitant ellipsis followed by a noncommittal question mark. He was an outlier, the unknowable entity, the perennially unemployed student who had potential to be a "real" person one day, participating in the workforce but…who knew? He might earn enough money for medical school, but…would he? One day he might even amount to something great and worthy of respect or…perhaps just nothing at all?

"I'm a student," said Leorio after a long sip that sucked down half the small glass. "I work odd jobs, but only to support myself while I study. Right now, I'm not working."

"What do you study?" asked Kurapika. If he couldn't neatly pigeonhole Leorio based on his current profession, he'd judge him based on his projected one.

"Medicine," said Leorio.

"That's respectable," said Kurapika, almost like he was surprised how respectable Leorio could be. "It's hard work to become a doctor."

"The work I can manage," said Leorio. "It's mostly the money that's the problem."

Kurapika said nothing. Leorio figured Kurapika was also from the kind of country where you didn't talk about money or the shit economy around the table. Which was funny, considering how into immediately knowing each other's jobs they all were. Kurapika probably pitied Leorio. He'd probably been warned about the economic situation of this place before he'd even landed, and he wasn't even all that surprised that Leorio, the first person he'd met around his own age, was such a loser.

Perhaps Kurapika wasn't that much better, considering the part of town he was living in, but at least he had a real job. In fact, maybe he just lived around here because he was cheap and so was the rent. Someone that cold and weirdly sensible at only nineteen years old had to be some kind of pint-sized miser in training. Who the hell had a full time job that young, even getting uprooted and moved across the world—probably, definitely on the company's bill—for an assignment, because he was already such a precious professional in his field that he got put in charge of stuff like being a liaison and negotiating with suppliers or whatever? That was some fancy desk and office shit, wasn't it? Kurapika probably even had a retirement fund set up already so he'd die peacefully in sixty years exactly as he'd lived, financially secure.

Netta finally made an appearance with a pot larger than her head suspended between two trembling hands. Leorio quickly moved glasses away from the trivet on the table so she could place the pot down easily. He was surprised to see Kurapika hop up to take the pot from her, despite not really being expected to do so as the guest. Without resistance but rather thanks, Netta allowed him to take it, because he wasn't Leorio. She praised Kurapika for being helpful, and then cast Leorio a knowing look over Kurapika's shoulder, as if this small act were a good indicator of how considerate a person Kurapika was and therefore not a bad catch. Leorio smiled back and raise his glass to her, but for an entirely different reason known only to him and the tottering devil on his shoulder.

"What is this?" asked Kurapika to Leorio directly. Netta was having trouble explaining the dish, since she couldn't find the name for the vegetable in the common language Kurapika was using. Switching to the dialect of their region, she'd asked Leorio if he knew it, and Kurapika had been astute enough to piece their exchange together based on the context.

"It's potatoes and the stalks of a plant called borage. It grows wild all over the place outside the city. The leaves can be filled and fried, but Netta didn't get any, because she wasn't sure you liked fried food, uh…because you're so thin," said Leorio. Netta was more fluent in the dialect, and had simply forced Leorio to translate for her instead of making an effort to explain so much on her own. Leorio cut out a few unnecessary adjectives that might've too closely hinted to Kurapika that Netta assumed he was female, but he kept the gist intact. Based on the curious narrowing of his eyes, Kurapika seemed to find Netta's concern for his figure peculiar. Leorio didn't explain it to him.

"So, you normally eat it with just oil poured over," said Leorio, explaining the process somewhat grudgingly because Netta wanted him to coach Kurapika on this. If Kurapika had never seen borage before, then he obviously wasn't going to know how to eat it properly, was he? Leorio really didn't think it was all so complicated that it merited a full lecture. One literally applied oil, and then a fork. Done. Some people liked to mash the potatoes as well. There wasn't a science to it.

"This oil in the bottle is spicy," said Leorio, holding up a thin glass bottle of oil that had dried peppers sunk into it and a red tinge, "and the cruet over there has normal oil. It's your choice."

Kurapika was gutless. He went for the normal oil. Netta commended this, because the spicy peppers would irritate his stomach if he were drinking so much soda. Before she could remember she was going to pour a little wine for Kurapika, Leorio reached over and snatched up the bottle from the edge of the table himself under the pretense of opening it, what with him being the strapping young man in the room and this being the strapping young man's responsibility. He then invited himself to pour each person's glass, keeping his promise to Kurapika that he'd only pour him a smidge, only enough to tint the lemon soda Kurapika had already added to his glass.

"Cin cin!" said Leorio in lieu of a real toast of any merit. Glasses were knocked, and the first plate commenced. He warned Kurapika there would be at least one more plate after this and then a dessert, but Kurapika already knew. He'd studied the eating habits of the country before moving here. Also, he'd eaten lunch with a coworker a week ago, and he'd been introduced to the meal format then. 

Leorio didn't like how, in the way Kurapika described it, Kurapika's lunch a week ago sounded like it was little more than a field study he'd undertaken. It gave the impression that Leorio and Netta and everyone in their neighborhood were but subjects, a group of predictable specimens for study by the serenely detached, scientific Kurapika, who worked in an office downtown. He wondered what Kurapika was getting out of a lunch with a grandmother and her downstairs neighbor, and who he might report these findings back to. Maybe he wrote a blog about it, comparing and contrasting all the minute details of his country with what he assumed he might understand about the other one, like "look at these Italiberians, they are so x, y and z, and back home we're all so a, b and c. Wow! So riveting!"

Leorio frowned down at his borage and potatoes as Netta mimed how she'd cleaned them and cooked them to Kurapika. When asked what he thought about the dish, Kurapika replied diplomatically that the borage had an interesting flavor. Leorio snorted with laughter into his plate at this answer. Netta seemed to be doing very poorly catering to this young man's foreign palate so far. Eventually, as the plates were emptied, Netta, rose once more to clear the table. Since he was the guest, she tried to force Kurapika to take the half portion of borage that was left. Leorio interceded and ate it for him so Netta could take the empty plates to the kitchen. Leorio soon got up and followed after her to bring back the empty pot he'd eaten the remaining borage from directly.

"You should entertain the guest; I'll put this away," said Netta with a shooing gesture directed at Leorio when he appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"I'm just going to rinse it," said Leorio, bringing the pot to the sink and turning on the tap. "By the way," he added, letting the water muffle the sounds going out to dining room and switching to Netta's dialect for good measure. "The guest is a man."

Leorio should've expected it, but somehow old ladies always caught him off guard with these things. Netta had smacked the back of his head and called him disgraceful before he could even think to dodge her. She thought Leorio was telling a stupid joke at the guest's expense, and let him know she didn't appreciate it.

"Netta, his chest; he hasn't got breasts," said Leorio, laughing and stepping out of reach before Netta could swipe at him again. "He's just a very small man."

"You're not funny," said Netta, her expression exasperated. "Go. Take the lamb out with you."

Leorio looked askance at Netta and grabbed the warmed pot of glistening, sauce coated lamb meat. She hit his arm with a damp dishtowel as he temporarily stepped back into range of her, just to remind him that she wasn't amused by his poor sense of humor. He'd anticipated this and made sure his arm was the only part she could get to. He told her to be careful, or she'd get dishwater into the pot. She told him to not be cheeky and take the food to the table for her, or she'd come at him with a ladle next.

Kurapika looked up curiously as Leorio entered the dinning room again. "What's so funny?" he asked. Leorio only realized then that he there was still an impish grin plastered across his face and quickly tried to straighten it out into something less suspicious.

"I was, uh, just giving Netta a hard time," said Leorio evasively. "By the way, you should drink a little wine with this dish. Not because we want you drunk or uncomfortable, but just because it tastes good. Wine makes this kind of stuff even better, so it's a shame if you don't have them together."

"Okay," said Kurapika. Apparently he'd given up fighting with them on this. That or he trusted Leorio a surprising lot for having only just met him. Leorio liked to think it was the second thing, because Leorio liked to think he was just that great of a guy. Doctors needed to instill a sense of trust in their patients if they wanted them to receive the best treatment possible. So, it was good to know he had that going for him.

"Awesome," said Leorio as Kurapika handed over his still mostly full glass. Leorio emptied it into his own glass and drained it swiftly, with practiced ease, not concerned with Kurapika's germs because Kurapika hadn't even touched the drink after they'd toasted. Leorio then poured a small amount, only a few sips' worth, of red wine into Kurapika's glass. If Kurapika felt thirsty, he could finish the bitter red soda he'd poured himself earlier. "How are you doing?" asked Leorio, handing the glass back. "Are you okay with the wine so far?"

"I'm fine," said Kurapika. "I don't think I've had enough for it to affect me."

If he'd had more confidence with Kurapika, Leorio would've made some annoying, joking comment about how clearly this meant he, Leorio, wasn't trying hard enough to totally ruin Kurapika, but he held back. For one, Kurapika look like a sensitive guy, and he might get mad that Leorio was joking about getting him intoxicated when Kurapika'd made it very clear that he was only going along with miniscule servings of wine to be polite. Occasionally, Leorio know when to quit or lay off a person, especially foreigners, who were often a bit delicate, particularly when one was joking about getting them in the vulnerable position of drunk around complete strangers. In fact, scratch that about foreigners. Everyone hated that. Such humor was truly tasteless. Too bad it was so damn easy.

Leorio served the lamb, piling it up in huge portions on each plate and calling mischievously to Netta that she needed to hurry over before it got cold and she was forced to spend another hour reheating it. Netta threatened to bring the dishtowel with her and give him a slap with it, but she soon plodded out of the kitchen. Kurapika just started between them, uncomprehending as they switched back and forth between a language he only had a working grasp of and another he'd never heard before in his life.

"You're almost out of wine," said Netta, taking the bottle and making to top off the small glass Leorio had poured for Kurapika. Leorio reached over and moved the glass just out of her reach. She gave him an annoyed look.

"That's all he wants," said Leorio firmly. "He's still got soda if he's thirsty." He then switched to the dialect. "Also, if he drinks more than this, your savarin will kill him."

"The savarin has just a little rum for flavor," said Netta dismissively. "Don't be facetious."

Leorio raise an eyebrow and said nothing, but Netta put the bottle down all the same. Kurapika let out a faintly audible sigh of relief. Leorio wasn't sure how relieved Kurapika would be once he found out what desert was. Kurapika'd have to eat at least a slice if he wanted to be as polite as Leorio was pretty sure Kurapika wished to be. A slice would be just enough, though. Just enough to get Kurapika in trouble. And if he hadn't drunk any alcohol in his entire life before now, he wasn't even going to enjoy the cake itself. It was just going to be sugary and bitter and noxious and terrible, and it would burn down his throat and rise up straight to his head before he'd even finished the plate. Considering this, Leorio needed to think up an exit strategy for Kurapika.

"How's the lamb?" asked Netta to Kurapika while Leorio turned more into himself, thinking of how he might be able to fix the problem of Kurapika getting embarrassingly drunk on rum-soaked cake in some faraway land in some old stranger's apartment. Leorio contemplated dropping the cake while bringing it out from the kitchen, but his experienced and nuanced relationship with economic strife told him it was too much of a waste of expensive rum and butter and all the precious time Netta had spent. Perhaps Leorio should cut the slices? No, not a chance, Cake was easy to slice, so Netta would do that herself as hostess, and she would make the servings generous. Vainly, Leorio hoped that maybe Kurapika didn't know how lengthy and exact a process it could be to make a savarin, and would therefore turn it down. It was the only way to save him from his own damning politeness.

Leorio's attention was called back by Netta, who chided him lightly for appearing to be bored while she'd told Kurapika all about the neighborhood. "What?" he asked brusquely. "I mean, pardon?" he corrected himself when Netta pursed her lips.

"Will you be able to show Kurapika around? Do you have some time?" asked Netta. "I was telling him he should go to Tutili and see the festivals. They have like forty festivals a year there."

"Next week there are festivals in my mother's hometown," said Leorio, shrugging. "I was already going there to see my cousins. I can take Kurapika if he doesn't mind sleeping on the floor in my great-grandmother's old house. It's an abandoned house," he continued, turning to Kurapika. "No-one has lived there for ten years. We only use it when we need a place to sleep that isn't the street during festivals, since technically one of my uncles owns it. There's always a mess, and there's always rats and owls. My cousin told me there were bats in the attic now."

Netta hit him on the shoulder in admonishment for giving such an unattractive description, but Leorio wasn't about to lie about it. The village was small, just a few hundred permanent residents, and the only time of year it had any population outside its elderly locals was in summer and during festivals, when the descendants of these elderly locals came to visit the ancestral home and give their kids a taste of how the country poverty of a generation before had been a completely different flavor from the urban poverty they lived now. The few well-off families from the village lived in the hills above the town center, tucked away in tall, white-walled houses, removed from the riff-raff and ancients below. A cousin of Leorio had told him that all these houses had private swimming pools, and the only time anyone lived in them was in August. Leorio believe him, because his cousin worked seasonally in a company dedicated to building and maintaining swimming pools for such people.

"I'd actually like to see more of this city," said Kurapika. "As I said before, I mainly just go to work and back. No-one's really given me a tour."

"I can show you around," said Leorio with a shrug. "I'm going to be studying a lot this week because I'm leaving for the festivals, but after that, I might have time."

"You should make time," said Netta. "You can study after the festivals."

Leorio shook his head and focused back on finishing his lamb. It was actually extremely delicious, and he found it hard to choose between continuing to talk and eating, because he couldn't possibly do both simultaneously. Kurapika seemed a bit unsure about having to eat the boney pieces with his hands, but Netta and Leorio had set that standard already. It was easier to get all the sauce that way, though Leorio told Kurapika he could eat it all with a fork and knife if he wanted, since the meat came right off. Netta was great at lamb, and Leorio exaggerating by saying even a toothless old man could eat it without effort. After a few delicate bites using his fork and knife, Kurapika tossed his stuffy pretense aside, and dared to pick the meat up with the tips of his fingers. Leorio knew Kurapika had come to realize what Leorio and Netta already knew, which was that leaving even a bit of the sauce to whatever animal was going to gnaw on the bones in the trash later was too great a shame.

Kurapika helped to tidy up afterward by placing the bones into the pot Leorio had already scraped clean with a piece of bread. Leorio had been unsuccessful in convincing Kurapika to do likewise, and he supposed that there was a limit to how much Kurapika was willing to get his hands dirty with food. If scrapping a pot clean with bread was boorish and barbaric, then Leorio thought civilization might be overrated anyway.

"For dessert, there's a savarin, but I need to put the strawberries before serving," said Netta. Leorio offered to help her make a pot of coffee, but she shuddered at the thought and said no. Leorio spent a few seconds feeling sore about it, as it meant Netta thought his coffee was terrible. She was right, but she hadn't needed to embarrass him in front of the guest. He caught Kurapika's eye, and Kurapika smile at him. Laughed at him. Was amused.

"You can wipe that grin off your face; there's enough rum in the savarin you won't remember which apartment is yours when you stagger out of here."

"What?" asked Kurapika in shock. "But…."

"I told you Netta's a bit heavy handed."

"But…."

"I guess I'll help you get home after this," Leorio mused thoughtfully. He made sure it came out as condescending as possible.

"Only if you're not falling all over the stairs yourself," said Kurapika.

"I can't say that isn't also a possibility," said Leorio, trying his utmost to be totally unhelpful just to see Kurapika squirm. Kurapika shouldn't have laughed at Leorio in Leorio's wounded state. "But I already know for a fact I can find my way home perfectly fine while pissed drunk, so I guess you're on your own."

"Then.... Should I tell her I'm full?" asked Kurapika. Leorio laughed irritatingly in response, because telling Netta you were full was something impossible. "Or should I just excuse myself and throw it up in the bathroom?"

"Hey now," said Leorio, face suddenly serious. "Don't waste food."

"I'm probably going to throw it up anyway. When it…hits me."

"I can't argue that, but I'm also against you wasting delicious cake intentionally. Sure, she's probably poisoned it for you with enough rum to bowl down a Padokian man-giant, but it is still a nice cake," said Leorio. "Be happy you're at home. You need to practice drinking somewhere."

"I don't need to know how to drink," said Kurapika sternly. "It is not a necessary skill."

"Yeah, well, if a half glass of wine on a full stomach still sends you under the table, then perhaps you need to know at least a little about drinking," countered Leorio.

"I'm under the age."

"No, you're not."

"I just don't want to. You can't make me."

"I'm suggesting, not making you. No-one is forcing you if you don't want to."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Before Kurapika could ask Leorio exactly how no-one was forcing him to eat a booze-soaked cake if he didn't want to when that was exactly what was happening right now, Netta entered the dinning room with the impressive, shiny savarin on a platter. Leorio could already smell the heady fumes wafting over from it as she approached. She placed it in the center of the table, and the small puddle of extra soaking liquid at the bottom flowed back and forth rhythmically as it settled from the momentum. From the sideboard, she took a serrated knife and began to cut slices, all the while explaining the process of making it to the best of her ability. Kurapika, upon hearing of the care that'd been taken to mix the dough properly and the hours it'd needed to rise, seemed to slowly resolve himself to having to eat the slice he was going to be offered. Leorio felt sorry for him. He felt sorry that Kurapika was obviously incredibly repressed and had zero appreciation for good things like rum cakes and red wine.

"Take two bites, and act like it's great," said Leorio, surprising Kurapika by switching to the international lingua franca Kurapika had never heard him speak until now. Leorio spoke it impeccably, almost without an accent, and for a moment Kurapika merely stared at him, unable to process this information. It was as if Leorio speaking to him in a comprehensible language suddenly transformed Leorio into a real, relatable human being and not a puzzle Kurapika had to figure out by listening extremely close to every single syllable he uttered. Leorio rolled his eyes and took a bite of his own slice of cake without saying another word.

"The coffee?" asked Leorio, noting its absence from the table. Netta only just realized it was missing and went to retrieve it. Normally, Leorio would've hurried to help her bring cups and such things, but now he had a bigger purpose. As soon as Netta turned her back, he bolted the entire slice of cake in front of him and passed the empty plate to Kurapika while gesturing for Kurapika to hand his own barely touched slice over. This Leorio placed before him like it was his own, all while struggling to chew and swallow the liquid-filled sponge in his mouth.

Contrary to what one might've thought, the sugar syrup it was bathed in didn't actually make swallowing a full slice of savarin that much easier. In fact, the sweetness irritated the throat and caused one to choke, but Leorio had anticipated that. He'd forced down more than a few liqueur-soaked cakes in his preteen and early teenage days. He and his friends used to steal them at festivals and parties in a nearby village that was famous for something bafflingly called "wine cakes" when they'd never had wine in them, but rather a strong citrus liqueur. Stealing cakes had been far easier than stealing actual alcohol from grown-ups. You just had to be able to run fast while shoveling the pastry into your mouth simultaneously. Leorio had honed this act into an art form by the time he was legally old enough to drink at sixteen, and only the fear of being arrested for stealing cakes when he was almost a grown man kept him from continuing it.

Kurapika watched Leorio, wide-eyed and silent, not even moving as Leorio took and drank the last of Kurapika's soda to help wash the cake down. Without comment, Leorio rose and went to the kitchen to help Netta bring down three little ceramic cups from the shelf so she could pour their coffees.

"Are you feeling okay, Leorio?" asked Netta curiously.

"I, uh, tripped on the edge of the rug in the doorway," he lied.

"Don't hurry so much," said Netta critically. "You're all legs, like a baby deer."

"Really," said Leorio, picturing a clumsy baby deer learning how to walk. This was what Netta thought of him. A baby deer full of rum-soaked savarin.

"Help me take the coffee and sugar to the table," she said, pointing to the moka pot on the stove.

Leorio did so, and hurried into the dinning room ahead of her. He told Kurapika calmly, again in their common international language, to act like he wasn't feeling very well as he drank his coffee. Then, Netta wouldn't be able to force another slice of savarin on him. Kurapika nodded wordlessly and went along with it.

"You're already finished!" announced Netta as she came up from behind Leorio and saw Kurapika's empty plate. Kurapika already had a vaguely pained expression primed and ready and painted across his face following his cue from Leorio.

"I told you the savarin would make him sick," said Leorio to Netta, switching back to the dialect though he was visibly gesturing toward Kurapika as he spoke, which made the topic of discussion rather evident. "Look how little he is. And he said he'd never drunk before."

"He's fine if he stops at one slice," said Netta dismissively. "I won't serve him the ammazzacaffè."

"But you'll still serve me the ammazzacaffè, right?" asked Leorio.

"The digestivos are in the freezer," said Netta with a shrug. "You can make one yourself."

Leorio put on an injured face, but tried to keep his steps even as he went to the kitchen to hunt down the short selection of after meal drinks. It was never predictable what they would be. Netta just bought whatever was on sale before one of her children visited, and then kept it for ages until it ran out. Leorio hoped there was nothing too sweet. His stomach was close to bursting, and sugar was the last thing he was craving.

Kurapika and Netta were chatting about a television show Netta had recommended him so he could learn the language better. She was trying to explain the story to him, but was having trouble because Kurapika didn't know how to talk about medieval kings and queens and their long extinguished kingdoms in every language he possibly spoke. The series Netta liked was about a dynasty from hundreds of years ago, and not even Leorio could talk about a show like that for as long as Kurapika was politely attempting to. Leorio had seen one episode of the series in question while taking a break from studying, and he'd decided that he didn't like the show nearly as much as everyone's mom and aunt seemed to. In his opinion nothing ever happened. All the actors did was talk forever between five or six extremely similar locations and make dramatic faces at each other. What kind of television was that? Certainly not the entertaining kind.

Leorio went back to his meal, quietly assessing the various inebriating options before him. He went for the cake first, forcing it down bite by bite like a chore. He accepted a second (although in reality a third) slice because Netta had gone through far too much trouble for so few slices to be eaten. The room was slowly growing uncomfortably warm now, which was a good hint he was probably getting tipsy. He finished the cake and then drank the small coffee in a few quick sips. This he followed with an shakily poured glass of whatever the hell liqueur this was that Netta had been keeping in her freezer for who the hell knew how long. It was so cold that the bottle was covered in a thin coating of frosty ice, and it hurt to hold it to pour.

Leorio sipped his unsteadily poured and much too liberal glass slowly, only feeling and not tasting the herbal liquid that burned its way down even as it chilled him to the bone. The room persisted in growing uncomfortably warm around him. He sat back and dozed, letting his mind wander as he drank, no longer really listening to what Kurapika and Netta were struggling to communicate to each other. The lunch had taken on an ephemeral aspect way out there in the dining room beyond the rim of his icy little glass, and time itself became a movement he could no longer track the passing of if he didn't occasionally glance down at his watch and see whole minutes were racing by.

"We should go," said Leorio, as if awakened suddenly. He'd realized just how much he was struggling to stay focused on his surroundings. Drinking while sitting down wasn't a good idea. He was watching the world through pebbled glass now, with only one fine point of ultimate clarity and far too intense brightness in the very middle. It was impossible. This was what was called tunnel vision. Fuck this. How much rum was in that cake? Did she get the liqueur for the ammazzacaffè from her grandson's neighbor? There hadn't been a label on the bottle, or any indication of its proof. Was he slowly going blind?

Netta told Leorio he was embarrassing himself in front of company by having brought himself to such a state, but Leorio was more than a little beyond caring at this point. He told Netta it was just a mild buzz, and he needed to sleep off the meal, which was true. He'd been exhausted even before he'd started drinking. The drinking was just encouraging him to solve that problem by going right the fuck to sleep there at the table.

"Should I take him?" asked Kurapika. Leorio noticed that the table was clear of all the dishes expect the small, empty glass he'd just placed there. Kurapika had been helping Netta put everything away, and Leorio hadn't even noticed it. Not really. His eyes had seen it, but they hadn't really worked the whole image out with his brain. He was vaguely aware that Kurapika had been clearing the table as if he'd glanced over and seen it in large letters on the headline of a newspaper being read by an old man across the car from him in the metro. He knew the words. He knew what they said. But, he hadn't spared a single thought in their direction until right now.

"I know where I live, Kurapika," said Leorio. "I can get myself to the elevator."

"The elevator is broken," Kurapika reminded him.

"Well, who the hell keeps breaking it, anyway?" asked Leorio. "Why does it have to break every few months? Old grandmas like Netta can't take the stairs every day. It's an injustice. What do we pay the community fees for if not to have a working elevator? We should demand a refund. This is ridiculous."

Netta told Leorio that he was ridiculous, getting drunk on cake like a teenager. Leorio said he agreed. He didn't say it was partly Kurapika's fault. Instead, he reminded her that an important part of eating a big meal was getting a little drunk with it. You weren't enjoying the life properly if you didn't get slightly buzzed over lunch on Sunday afternoons. Netta laughed at him, since the absurdity of Leorio getting drunk on cake put her in surprisingly good humor. She said he was crazy. She told Kurapika to help Leorio find his way home, ignoring Leorio's dogged insistence that he really kind of knew where he lived in his own apartment building, thanks.

"Where do you live?" asked Kurapika once they were standing together on the landing. He'd switched to the international language he was better at, now that he knew Leorio was fluent in it. There was no Netta to politely include in their discussion.

"Downstairs," said Leorio.

"But like, where?" asked Kurapika.

"4C."

"Are you okay for me to leave you?" asked Kurapika, nodding towards the stairs. Leorio was offended by the implication.

"I've been way drunker than this and had to walk home an hour and a half in the rain," Leorio informed him. "I'd think a mere flight of stairs would be manageable."

Kurapika shrugged and turned to a door across the landing. He and Netta were on the same floor. This was probably how they'd met. Leorio processed the information a moment and then spun himself to face the descending stairwell. He almost immediately crumpled into a disorganized heap a short ways down after slipping and skidding over three steps. His balance had be fully lost before he could clutch the railing, and he sat back hard on the edge of a step, vociferously swearing away the shock and pain of this most sharp and uneven of landings.

"Are you kidding me?" asked Kurapika, already beside Leorio and reaching down to help him up. Leorio winched at the painful awareness that he had a tailbone and that it was injured. He tried to rise quickly to demonstrate that he was totally fine and had just missed a step by accident, as one occasionally did, whether drunk or sober, but Kurapika wasn't having it. Kurapika turned out to be surprisingly compact and strong, absolutely nothing as spindly or dainty as Leorio'd assumed he'd be under his dress. He was soon forcing Leorio back up the stairs, obviously unconcerned with whether Leorio wanted to go with him or not.

"Go lie down," said Kurapika, releasing Leorio into his living room to stagger his own way forward and navigate the slight hazard of the coffee table between him and the sofa. Leorio collapsed onto the sofa as he reached it, his head spinning lazily in soft gyrations that weren't strong enough to make him feel sick but were definitely interfering with his gross motor skills.

"Bring me three glasses of water and two ibuprofen," he commanded from his narrow bed. "Don't give me paracetamol unless it's all you have. My liver can only handle so much abuse in a day…."

Kurapika came back balancing the three glasses and small box of pills in blister packaging. Leorio immediately drank two of the glasses of water and left the third for later in case he got a headache. He commanded Kurapika to open both sets of balconet doors facing out to the street because the breeze today was too lovely to let pass by. The sounds of clinking cups and spoons drifted up from the bar below, but most of the patrons who hadn't stopped for a coffee or a small drink were already gone. The murmur of their conversation, littered with the occasional audible gossip or complaints about lightweight things like getting a sore throat from the air conditioning pumped out at work, rose up and entered Leorio's ears like the chirping songs of birds become people. He allowed it to lull him to sleep, as if he were sprawled across the couch in his own apartment just one floor down. It was apparently a floor too far for him in his state, but he'd go back after a nap. He'd go back and get to work, like the responsible young man Netta imagined him to be. Like a man with a goddamn future or something. Like the man with the promise Netta thought a girl like Kurapika would appreciate.

With a groan Leorio grabbed a small pillow that had fallen to the floor and set it over his face to block out the light. There was still so much work and studying to do. But there was still so much sleep to get done first. As he was in no condition for reading and concentration, he slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Endnote:** I will update this fic sporadically, but each part will kind of stand on its own without a big plot that will leave everyone hanging if I just stop adding on to it one day.


	2. Altezza è mezza bellezza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this super long chapter, Kurapika gets drunk for the first time at a village festival, and then, he and Leorio make out a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, I had to get this done before August ended and the whole summer along with it. I even made a really lame playlist for this to put me in the village festival mood. 
> 
> The problem is, though, that Italians and Spanish party during village festivals very differently (so far as I know, but then, maybe my part of Italy is just lame and really into seasonal markets and regional food more than debauchery). The Spanish have definitely earned their party reputation, and it’s not just from how lit their discotecas are. The pueblos are lit as fuck, too. Living through a pueblo in festivals is like living through Armageddon, but drunk. Like, the world won’t end in fire or ice, it will fucking end in kalimotxo, so fucking help you.

Leorio wasn’t sure what inspiration had struck him when he found himself knocking on the door to Kurapika’s apartment at 9pm a week later. The first thing he asked was if Kurapika were busy. He wasn’t. Would he be busy tomorrow or the next day? No, he had a break from work for the long weekend. In that case, did he want to get dinner at a bar a couple blocks over? The place Leorio had told him about when they’d crossed paths in the vestibule two days ago? Yes, the place with the best portions for the best price. They’d have to leave right now to beat the rush of students that invariably descended on the place Thursdays before the start of a long weekend.

Kurapika threw a light jacket over what appeared to be lounge clothes, but Leorio ordered him to go back inside and put on either coordinated track bottoms or a pair of jeans before Leorio would be caught dead with him in public. Kurapika returned in a sufficiently stylish pair of casual cotton trousers a moment later.

“I’m getting a hamburger,” said Leorio, passing the menu card to Kurapika. They’d got a seat outside right as the place was beginning to fill up. Leorio considered this great timing, since it was normally a better idea to make a reservation for busy nights. He wasn’t sure how willing Kurapika would be to stand and eat at the bar. “We can split some croquettes. Are you healthy? Do you want a tomato salad? It’s too late at night to eat lettuce. It doesn’t digest easy.”

“And a hamburger digests easy?” asked Kurapika incredulously.

“I’m coating my stomach in preparation for drinking,” said Leorio like this was the obvious, sensible thing. Kurapika wouldn’t know. Kurapika didn’t drink. Leorio would just have to educate him, then. “Salad just floats around inside you. It offers no protection.”

“Oh, and is that your studied medical opinion?” asked Kurapika. Leorio shook his head. No, there was nothing medically sound about this advice at all. Kurapika had caught him.

“Each person has their own methods and tricks to pace themselves for a long night,” said Leorio. “Placebo or no, we all have our means.”

Kurapika’s expression became confused. “A…long night?” he asked. Leorio had been speaking in Kurapika’s language the whole time, and Kurapika hadn’t yet heard a single thing about this night turning out to be particularly long.

“After dinner, we’re going to one of the festivals nearby. I haven’t decided which.”

“Really? Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“I just decided on it now. I was supposed to leave tonight anyway, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to, or that I had time. Then, I remembered you were upstairs, and you’ve never been to a festival.”

Kurapika frowned in further confusion. “Wait, that sounds like you already decided it before you asked me to get dinner.”

“I wasn’t 100-percent sure I felt like driving,” said Leorio, shrugging and adjusting his utterly useless teashades. “Like maybe we’d get dinner, I’d feel too lazy, and we just wouldn’t go tonight.”

“So that means you have a car,” said Kurapika, mildly intrigued by this new information.

“Yes. My cousin sold it to me last year. It was a bargain. I couldn’t say no. I park it in Netta’s dead husband’s old spot downstairs on the condition that I drive her to the doctor’s office when she has an appointment.” He lazily flicked the edge of the laminated menu card in Kurapika’s hands, and Kurapika nearly dropped it. “Now, have you decided what to eat? The pizza with tuna and onion isn’t bad.”

Kurapika looked over the menu at last, asking Leorio for clarification on some of the cooking styles he didn’t know. Despite being so thin, Kurapika wasn’t all that healthy. He ordered pizza and fried rice balls stuffed with cheese. Leorio decided they didn’t need croquettes with the rice balls, and ordered a large serving of the rice balls in two styles to spilt, along with a tomato salad. He also made a point of ordering Kurapika a lemon soda, since, as he baffling reminded Kurapika like Kurapika wouldn’t know, Kurapika didn’t drink.

After a greasy dinner, Leorio forced Kurapika to get up so they could move on to a smaller bar to drink and pass time until it was a more reasonable hour to head to the festivals. His true intentions revealed themselves when he paused in a side street to smoke, and Kurapika told him he wouldn’t be a good role model as a doctor if he treated his health so flippantly. Leorio shrugged and said everyone couldn’t all be pure, pristine examples of unsullied youth at its prime like Kurapika clearly was. And anyway, a doctor was supposed to look after the health of other people. Who cared what doctors did to themselves? Even doctors had to go to the doctor and get told off sternly for their tarred and sticky lungs. It kept balance in the universe and prevented doctors from becoming immortal beings. It also introduced an interesting, existential debate within oneself over one’s choice of profession later on in life as health deteriorated. The doctor would be forced to ask themself how qualified a professional they were, or had ever been, to be trusted with evaluating and monitoring the health of others when they couldn’t have been trusted to well maintain their own.

And yet, for Kurapika’s sake, Leorio limited himself to just the one, quick cigarette. He told Kurapika it was because he wanted to protect Kurapika from the secondhand smoke, and not because Kurapika being so critical of his bad habit had made him feel a bit guilty and self-conscious for having it. It wasn’t often anyone really called Leorio out on these sorts of things directly to his face, at least not recently. He wasn’t accustomed to constantly having to play up to someone’s better expectations of him anymore. Clearly he's been spending too much time in isolation studying. He could no longer read people as well as he used to, back when he’d had the semblance of a life.

At the bar, the man behind the counter tried to explain to Kurapika the ten million ways to order beer in his country. Kurapika was doing well, remembering each type down to the exact range of milliliters it might contain. He and Leorio then spent far too much time trying to dream up whatever machine must’ve been used to fill and [more mysteriously] recap all the cheap olives in the bowl between them. Kurapika even started to draw out a diagram for Leorio on a napkin, so passionate he was to prove he was right and that his idea was better. Apparently Kurapika knew what an industrial olive pitting machine looked like and had seen one in action before. Leorio never had, so Leorio just dreamed up the most ridiculous device he could think of to exasperate Kurapika and make Kurapika try even harder.

“My cousins want me to go to a larger village near the foot of the mountains—Tutili, Netta told you about it—to meet them at my uncle’s house. But, we won’t go there,” said Leorio as Kurapika got into the car and buckled up. Leorio had gone to get the car from the garage himself while Kurapika had got sucked into a conversation about local football teams with some people near the bar door.

“Then where exactly are we driving off to in the middle of the night?”

“Uh, it’s only eleven thirty? How is this the middle of a night? The sun has barely been down for an hour.”

Kurapika didn't relent. “Yeah, but, where are we going? Or have you not decided yet?”

“My mom’s village, Pabasa,” said Leorio, like it was obvious. “It’s small. The crowd will be more manageable, especially since most people will be heading to Tutili. There’s a popular singer preforming on the main stage in Tutili, and they have a well-known DJ in one of the parties. Most people our age are going there tonight.”

“We aren’t?”

“I was originally planning to, since my cousins asked me, but…” Leorio hesitated, not sure how to tactfully breach certain truths. It didn’t feel nice to say that he didn’t think the boisterous, bacchanal festivities in Tutili were really at Kurapika’s tempo. It implied he thought less of Kurapika for not being a drinker, and he really didn’t think much less of him, even if he did occasionally give Kurapika a hard time. Also, more importantly, you’d have to pay out the nose for drinks there that should’ve been either free, or at least cost something reasonable.

But of course, Tutili always swelled with visitors and tourists from all over the region during its festivals. They’d probably charge people for the music, too, and Leorio didn’t honestly care how famous the singer was; Leorio wouldn't pay for something that should’ve been the responsibility of the town hall. It was a public festival. He knew if they weren’t charging visitors, it meant the most famous act would play the main lines of their greatest hits in a medley, it would last only about twenty minutes, and then they would step down. So in that case, who cared? It was just a publicity move to bring people to Tutili and not worth the extra half hour of driving and hunting for someplace to park.

“It’s not worth it. The small town festival is something more unique. What’s in Tutili you can find anywhere, really. I’m taking you to a real festival. Unless you really like the singer Grezzo. Then I guess I can take you to Tutili.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Then I envy you tremendously.”

They were heading out of the city now, but the traffic was terrible. Leorio turned on the radio for lack of much to say, apologizing that they were headed in the same direction that most people seemed to be going at this time. He would’ve taken a more circuitous route out of the city if he’d known. Kurapika said it was okay, that frankly he was surprised so many cars were still on the road so late at night. Leorio explained to him the concept of staying out late and how it was different here from most other places. Dinner was normally between nine and eleven thirty, and then you didn’t really think about going out to party until after midnight. If Kurapika couldn’t keep up with this, Leorio was more than understanding of that.

“How long will it take to reach Pabasa?” asked Kurapika once they’d finally peeled away from the traffic at an exit a few kilometers outside the city. The change was practically instantaneous. It was as if they'd entered another world as the street became much emptier, the way darker and more winding. Leorio told him it would be like this for much of the rest of the trip, and that, beyond the clustered, twinkling lights of distant hamlets nestled in the valleys and climbing the sides of the mountains, there wouldn’t be much to see.

“We should arrive in around an hour from now,” said Leorio, estimating generously. “There’s no direct way. The town is in a valley, so it takes a while, and the road winds a lot. You can try to sleep if you want. Since it’s the middle of the night for you.”

“I’ll stay awake,” said Kurapika with silly sort of resolve in his words. “You might get bored.”

“I’ll just turn on the radio,” said Leorio, reaching over and twisting the knob so the volume went up. “I’m used to driving alone.”

“The signal won’t break up in the mountains?”

Leorio glanced at Kurapika, surprised. “How do you know that?”

“You said the village was in a valley.”

“Oh,” said Leorio appraisingly. Apparently Kurapika had driven through mountains before. “Well in any case, it just gets a little static-y, but it never cuts out completely. When I say mountains, what I mean are often large hills, and occasionally they’re high enough to be real mountains in parts. There’s snow on the tallest peaks in winter, but it’s not exactly ski country in this region. The huge mountains are further north.”

“What’s Pabasa like? So I have an idea,” said Kurapika. He reclined his seat back a bit further and stretched himself out.

“It’s…a small village,” said Leorio, shrugging. “There’s not much. In the plaza near the edge of town there will be some people gathered and dancing to old hit dance songs you won’t know, because they were hits in our language. There will be plenty of drinking, which you won’t do because you’re ‘underage’. And tomorrow, there will be a procession of some statues, which I won’t even go to.”

“You make it sound like a great time,” said Kurapika sarcastically. “But one thing,” he continued, “…we’ll be here tomorrow?”

“Yes. If we sleep, it will be at my great-grandmother’s house.”

“The one with the bats?”

“We’ll certainly see if that’s true or not.”

Kurapika smiled in a quiet way instead of laughing, which came off as a bit condescending. He wasn’t ecstatic but rather bemused with whatever it was that Leorio was dragging him into with such a poorly thought-out plan. Kurapika had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he was strangely fine with it. Leorio was impressed with Kurapika’s ability to go along with things, even if Kurapika was still so eerily quiet most of the time.

An hour later, they arrived to the first cluster of houses shrouded by high walls and solid front gates that signaled the beginning of the village. Slowly, the houses grew closer to the street and more visible. The road began to narrow, and its turns became more angular and frequent. Leorio passed through a small, sparsely illuminated plaza that he had to turn nearly all the way around in to exit down another street. He went much too fast down a few more streets Kurapika was surprised to hear were not one way even though two cars wouldn’t have been able to pass each other on them. Kurapika commented that it was like a maze, and Leorio told him it was because the streets hadn’t been designed with cars in mind, so the ones you could drive on were limited in the older parts of town. Eventually, however, the navigable streets increased as Leorio worked away from the center. Finally, they passed beneath a short arch that lead down a crooked, sloped path to the fringes of the village in another direction from the way they’d come. Leorio told Kurapika that normally he would’ve taken a longer way to reach the village so he could approach it from this direction without having to pass through town, but he knew the streets would be mostly empty right now, so he’d driven through as a shortcut.

Leorio pulled up to a large, corroded gate alongside the widening street leading away from the village. The surface of the gate still retained a few peeling patches of its once pale, orange-pink paint job, but it was clear from the encroaching vines and cracked plaster over the walls that no-one lived here or cared to keep the place up. Leorio got out and unlocked the gate with a set of large, old-fashioned keys Kurapika handed him from the glove box. The gate creaked as Leorio pushed both sides open and rained rusty debris down into his hair, which he brushed off before reentering the car. The metal rang with a dull sound from the vibration of the car as it passed through. Leorio parked in the small courtyard beyond and finally shut the engine off.

Here, in the dark and enclosed space away from the street, the world was uncannily quiet. Every footstep, opened and shut door, even the rustle of clothing as Kurapika squeezed carefully through the tight gap between the car and the wall to get to the gate where Leorio was waiting, seemed to fill this small space encircled by the crumbling walls with the seemingly deafening, intrusive noises of human life. Distantly, the sound of music was carried over from some other corner of town, but it seemed strangled off by whatever strange forced caused such a heavy stillness to reign in the courtyard. Leorio motioned for Kurapika to follow him, and they stepped out into the street, each pulling one of the two halves of the gate after him. After a brief struggle getting the locking mechanism to line up properly, Leorio closed and locked the gate once more.

It was dark walking in the street between the walled, empty houses, but the light increased as they entered the village. Leorio led the way through more twisting, narrow streets than Kurapika could remember having seen when they’d driven through. Leorio pointed one street out to Kurapika in particular, saying it started out wide enough for a vehicle to enter on one end but then gradually tapered into the thin alleyway entrance Kurapika was currently able to see. Though it was dark, Leorio told Kurapika to walk down the alley with his arms out to his sides, his elbows bent and palms flat against both walls, and feel for himself as the road slowly widened. Kurapika told Leorio that he could see it already, but Leorio made it obvious he wasn’t going to be satisfied until Kurapika tested how narrow the street was for himself. Grudgingly, Kurapika did so, and confirmed that indeed, the alley was like a hallway at this end and much too narrow to bring a car down. He walked a good distance as he spoke, and stopped once the street had widened so far that his fingers were no longer brushing the cool, dusty walls on either side, no matter how far he stretched.

The matter settled to Leorio’s liking, he and Kurapika continued through the darkened, vacant village streets once more, this time climbing steadily upwards. Some of the ways Leorio led them along were so steep that steps had been cut into the walkways to facilitate their rise to the level of the town center. After one notably long flight, the ground at last began to even out. At the same time, the sound of voices and music became louder. Light appeared between the buildings ahead, and Leorio told Kurapika the obvious thing that those lights were where they were headed.

Kurapika stayed close as the number of people suddenly increased from zero to everyone. They were all section off into groups of friends and acquaintances, forming huddles and concentric arcs of varyingly lengths and degrees of sharpness, that faced inwards towards the middle of the plaza. They were nearly all moving, even if just swaying lightly, in approximate time to the beat of loud music projected through speakers at another end of the plaza. Leorio led Kurapika around the margins of the crowd, avoiding the more exuberant dancers that occasionally hopped across his chosen path. He saved an old man’s drink from spilling after the man had knocked it against a crooked, unexpectedly low-hanging decoration while holding it up in the air to dance. The man thanked him profusely, as only one who was truly grateful and truly drunk could, but Leorio told him not to worry and kept on without stopping. He grabbed Kurapika by the arm to pull him after, since a dancing old woman, who appeared to be much, much older than belied by her ability to sashay across the cobblestones, had distracted him from following to wherever Leorio was taking them.

Leorio, of course, was taking them to the bar. A moment later, Kurapika was clutching an unrequested lemon soda, and Leorio was sipping greedily at an over-abundantly iced cola drink he didn’t seem to believe was strong enough. He stood around, forcing Kurapika to wait forever as he drank two more of these drinks, before deciding it was enough and carrying off a third with him back into the crowd and the party.

“If you don’t like dancing, then I don’t know what to tell you,” said Leorio loudly into Kurapika’s ear and motioning to the various, gyrating bodies before them. Along the edges, and occasionally in the middle of groups of friends, there stood a few motionless celebrants with tired faces, clearly too shy or sternly sober to partake in much revelry. These people, Leorio warned Kurapika, were not who Kurapika should aspire to emulate. Kurapika pointed out that it was impossible to dance with a beverage in his hand, but Leorio scoffed at this weak attempt to get out of dancing and proceeded to teach him how.

“You look ridiculous,” said Kurapika, not budging more than to tap his foot and look around uncertainly.

“You look worse. You look like you’re bored.”

“This a little boring,” admitted Kurapika frankly.

“If you would like, there is a fair with attractions for children in a larger town ten minutes from here,” said Leorio. “You might be small enough that they’ll let you ride some. We could get cotton candy. I haven’t had that in years.”

Kurapika made a face at Leorio’s suggestion. “No thanks. And anyway, I don’t know any of these songs. I don’t know how to dance this stuff,” he said as he motioned to the people in front of them. He’d worked his way to the margins of the crowd while Leorio was distracted by an acquaintance. Leorio had attempted to introduce them, but it was too loud, and he was sure Kurapika hadn’t heard the man’s name any of the three times he’d asked him to repeat it.

“Do I look like I know how to dance to this, either?” asked Leorio. He forced Kurapika to consider the couples and groups of people nearest to them. “Do any of these people look like they know how to dance?”

“They seem to have an idea…” said Kurapika doubtfully. “At least they know the song.”

“Only because they’ve heard the song a million times already in a million other festivals…and weddings and baptisms and whatever else has dancing involved,” said Leorio. “Also, there actually is a proper dance for this song. There’s like six couples in this entire plaza dancing it correctly. Normal people just do the same frenetic hoping around for every song, though.”

Intrigued by this, Kurapika scanned the crowd to find an example of a couple that actually knew how to dance. Leorio noticed, grabbed his arm, and brought him across the plaza to show him.

“See? Knowing how to dance is not required here,” said Leorio, indicating an older couple that people were gathered around and watching, giving them a wide berth for the dramatic, complicated steps they were preforming. A few spectators laughed and imitated the proper dance with extra drama laid on top, but the couple didn’t care. They were too busy feeling the music, in their own world for what maybe, forty years ago, had been their song.

“It still feels ridiculous,” said Kurapika. He was ever so slowly inching his way back to the edge of the crowd once more, like Leorio wouldn’t notice.

“No-one’s watching you. I promise.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Are you implying everyone here looks like an idiot? That’s harsh. They’re just having a good time.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Kurapika quickly. “I just don’t think I fit in here. I don’t think I’m capable of this kind of stuff.”

Leorio sighed and didn’t answer. He led Kurapika to a side street where they wouldn’t have to lean close and speak so loudly into each other’s ears over the music. Here, he handed Kurapika his drink to hold while he smoked a cigarette. Kurapika took a seat on some steps that looked to be part of a side entrance to some sort of municipal building. Leorio leaned against the doorway beside him.

“I can ask some girls over, and we can teach you to dance,” suggested Leorio. “I was exaggerating when I said I didn’t know it. I know the basics, but I’m not an expert like the grandparents back there. We’ll need girls to help us.”

“I’m fine just watching,” said Kurapika after taking a tentative sip of his lemon soda. The ice had melted down by a lot already, so it wasn't a pleasant taste.

“I didn’t bring you to stand around bored while I drink and flatter middle-aged women,” said Leorio. He frowned down past the glow of his cigarette at Kurapika before reaching over to knock the ashes off downwind so they wouldn’t land in Kurapika’s hair or their drinks.

“It’s an interesting experience. I’m grateful that you invited me,” said Kurapika, coming off as much too polite and diplomatic in his word choice for what he was saying to be totally true. Leorio nudged Kurapika to slide over with his foot and then sat down on the steps next to him, crushing the spent cigarette against the side of the building after making sure it was dead. He took his drink back.

“So…,” Leorio started, but stopped. Feeling agitated, but not sure how to handle it, he automatically began to prepare a second cigarette. Kurapika had the nerve to smile in his laughing way as Leorio handed the drink back.

“Maybe I should have some of this,” said Kurapika as he looked distrustfully down at the contents of the large plastic cup he was holding once more.

“You don’t need to,” said Leorio. A touch of concern crept into his voice. For a brief moment, he forgot the cigarette. “I fully support your abstinence from alcohol. Plenty of people can have a good time without it. I’m not going to pressure you into drinking at all. In fact, I’ll throw that whole thing in the street before I let you drink it.”

“Maybe it’s like the lunch last week,” said Kurapika. “I’m too uptight. Too straitlaced.”

“You’re fine. People are different,” said Leorio. He remembered the cigarette and lit it. “It’s understandable,” he said as he exhaled the first breath of smoke.

The silence between them roared with the sound of music ricocheting off the walls and windows and down the street. Anyone passing by and seeing them would think they were sitting and taking a break from the festivities. Among the revelers, a conga line formed, and the bodies obediently lined up for it, hopping past in file as the group wound its way through the plaza. Leorio’s friend—whatever his name was—shouted in acknowledgement of having seen them both, and Leorio waved back while pointing to his cigarette in explanation. The friend gave him a thumbs up and trotted off along with the rest of the conga line that wasn’t so much dancing a conga as it was running in circles trying not to crash into itself as it grew ever longer.

When Leorio looked back, it was too late. Kurapika had resolved himself and drunk more than half of Leorio’s drink as quickly as possible. Leorio, a man of his word, knocked the cup out of Kurapika’s hand with such force that it cleared the pavement and splashed against the opposite curb of the grey tiled street, leaving a trail of dark liquid and half-melted ice in its wake.

“What?” asked Leorio, stunned. He swore and plucked up the cigarette that was starting to burn from there it had fallen into his lap. “What the fuck?”

“That was surprisingly easy to get down,” said Kurapika as he watched the cup rock back and forth on the street.

“It will come back up surprisingly easy, too,” said Leorio. “What the hell was that? Like fucking _half_ _the huge-ass glass_? Did I really just see that?”

“It didn’t seem strong,” said Kurapika with a shrug. He seemed to be waiting impatiently for something to happen. He’d never got drunk before, so he wasn’t entirely sure what might come next after the drink was inside of him. His knowledge of the inebriation process was mostly secondhand, and no-one who’d ever shared a drinking story with him had ever really bothered to count down in minutes how long it took the alcohol to hit.

“It usually doesn’t seem that way,” said Leorio sagely. He was obviously cross about having been forced to waste the perfectly good drink he was working on and sulked as he sucked on the end of the cigarette. “That’s the dangerous part of it.”

“How strong was it?” asked Kurapika.

“Well, I had two full glasses and let’s say an eighth of the one I just tossed, and I’m feeling vaguely buzzed and good about shit right now, so I’m going to conclude from this that you'll probably be dead in three hours.”

“No, seriously, Leorio.”

“I’m totally serious.”

“Please stop being difficult, and just give me a rough estimate.”

“Instead of that, how about you try to fucking stand, and we’ll see how you manage. It’s almost impossible to tell how drunk you are when you’re sitting the whole time.”

Leorio tossed his cigarette aside and hoped up, twisting around as he did so to see if Kurapika was following gracefully—if at all—after. Kurapika was holding the wall to steady himself as he came to his feet, his expression oddly perplexed, as if he hadn’t expected the alcohol to rise to his head so quickly.

“I’m a bit woozy."

“That sounds about right,” said Leorio with a slow nod as he appraised Kurapika’s condition. “That will transform to tipsy in about five minutes. I might have to carry you home.”

“I can manage,” said Kurapika. He brushed away Leorio’s offered arm of support and started to walk forward, back towards the plaza. Leorio followed closely, spotting him in a condescending way that irked Kurapika and made him snap that Leorio better not touch him, or else. Or else _what_ had yet to be determined, as Kurapika was falling steadily into an astounding degree of drunkenness with each passing minute.

True to his word, Kurapika did manage, and for quite a while. He even found it in him to smile in a way that seemed like it might be real and accept an invitation to dance from a group of girls. These girls and Leorio then began work on the imperative—at least to their one-track, inebriated minds—task of getting Kurapika to learn how to dance after Kurapika told the girls he didn’t know how. For how much he’d been hemming and hawing over it while sober, Kurapika wasn't all that terrible at dancing, and the girls started mocking Leorio that Kurapika would soon surpass him, a native of their own country, as the night progressed. Leorio took this as a challenge, and started pulling out all the most complicated steps and maneuvers he’d ever learned growing up, even if he could only half-remember most of them. Kurapika rehearsed and soon matched these movements well enough for a novice. Leorio became afraid that the girls might actually be right.

Leorio had his work cut out for him trying to keep Kurapika from accepting the drinks people kept handing to him when they saw he was without one. Leorio commanded Kurapika to refuse any drink that wasn’t handed to him by Leorio, since Leorio was the only person present, those present including Kurapika himself, with Kurapika’s best interests in mind. This didn't work out very well, as a tipsy Kurapika was rather obliging and agreed to seemingly everything. In the same breath that he agreed to drink only what Leorio handed him, he’d turn and accepted an extra drink brought over by one of the people in their steadily expanding circle. In such instances, Leorio would pluck the drink out of Kurapika’s hands before he could lift it to his mouth, and pass it off to some other reveler in the immediate vicinity. The problem with free drinks, however, was that more and more kept coming, fueling the festival participants into wilder, more frenzied animation, and leaving Leorio to guard Kurapika closely like a damn goalkeeper.

Leorio, not as drunk as he’d like to be, but too concerned for Kurapika’s health to risk drinking more, decided they should go rest instead of staying up the entire night. He’d lost sight of Kurapika three times already, despite standing directly over him, and this had both baffled and alarmed him greatly. When he found Kurapika again after the third time, leaning against a wall and disinterestedly sipping a tall plastic cup of dubious contents, Leorio had taken Kurapika by the arm and led him away from the plaza instead of back into it. He also took the drink, naturally, and drank it himself as they walked.

“What time is it?” asked Kurapika. His voice didn’t sound drunk at all. It was a bit unnerving. Only the faint, occasional falter in his step gave him away.

“Time to call it a night,” said Leorio. He was too lazy to check his watch in the dark for Kurapika. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m going to vomit,” said Kurapika, his voice still strange and matter-of-fact. He sounded like a restless spirit possessing the drunken body of a young man that was not his own, but which he’d found in this condition and was perplexed by.

“Try not to,” said Leorio. “It’s not very nice to vomit in the street. It gets on your shoes. Also, it’s a chore for the people that live here to clean up.”

“I don’t think I will. Vomit, I mean. I won’t do it.”

“I don’t think you have any idea, or much of a choice.”

“I guess you’re right. But I’ll try not to.”

They continued onwards, Leorio keeping an arm out to catch Kurapika the few times when Kurapika stumbled over invisible obstacles in the street which he constantly stopped to look back on and never found. When they reached the house, Leorio opened the small door in the gate and guided Kurapika over the bottom portion of the frame in case Kurapika didn’t see it or expect it to be there. Leorio held Kurapika back to keep him from wandering around while Leorio locked the gate anew. Then, he led Kurapika towards the kitchen door where they could enter the house from the garden. The key to the front door had been lost years ago, Leorio explained, not sure if Kurapika even heard him. Leorio tossed his empty plastic cup into the overgrown, fire-hazard of tall grass that was now the garden and directed Kurapika to the outdoor bathroom, as the house had none inside. He smoked a cigarette as he waited for Kurapika to emerge, and put it out completely with a stop of his foot before he opened the kitchen door so they could enter the house and go to sleep.

“Watch your step,” he warned Kurapika as they edged around the overly large wooden table that dominated the center of the small kitchen. He remembered watching his great-grandmother kneading impossibly huge piles of dough there, tearing and rolling, the occasional unchecked bead of sweat dripping down from the tip of her long nose while Leorio joked that she better not have added salt to the dough yet, or it was going to be over-seasoned. Always, she’d wipe her face on her sleeve and tell him to shut up if he wanted any doughnuts. Leorio would immediately shut up.

The interior room of the house was devoid of furniture that was usable. Upstairs there was a set of sofas that'd been too ugly and worn to merit the pain of bringing down, but which were no better than the floor, really. Upon these sofas was where Leorio planned to spend the night, because psychologically the sofas had always been easier for him to fall asleep on. Unlike the cold floor, they at least warmed up a bit with the application of bodily heat.

“Here, I’ll help you up,” said Leorio, reaching a hand forward to rest near the small of Kurapika’s back as Kurapika climbed the stairs ahead of him. “You’re too drunk to get up there by yourself. These old houses don’t always have handrails anymore.”

“It seems unsafe not to have handrails.”

“I think before a lot didn’t even have real stairs, just ladders. Use your hands and crawl up. Turn left at the landing.”

Kurapika willfully ignored Leorio and climbed the stairs walking upright with just a hand resting against the wall next to him.

“Left at the landing,” Leorio reminded him after Kurapika had taken a few steps right.

“I know; I’m just wondering…if that’s a busted gramophone?” he asked, pointing to one of the pieces of assorted junk in the room to the right.

“Maybe,” said Leorio, glancing over as he reached the top of the stairs to where Kurapika had indicated. “There’s a lot of junk here. The woman was ninety-seven when she died, and she hadn’t come up here in years by that time. I’m sure my uncles just left all the extra junk from downstairs here to store it when they moved her bed and things down for her.”

“Okay, so are there more beds up here?”

“My uncles took the beds to my cousins’ houses. There should be a couple couches, though.”

“And is that pile of rubble over there a couch?”

Leorio leaned over Kurapika to look into the room Kurapika was waving his arm into, attempting to point and not fully realizing he’d failed to complete the gesture.

“Well, shit,” said Leorio. Someone had kicked apart the sofa in the room and slashed it up with a knife in all the vital, upholstered parts that made it preferable to sleeping on the floor. It was the broken skeleton of a sofa now, the padding strew about the room like dust bunnies matured into stronger, more opaque dust rabbits. “I’ll have to check tomorrow how anyone got in, unless it was one of my delinquent nephews, in which case, their mom should be thrilled to hear what they’ve done to great-granny’s couch.”

“Well, I’m so tired I feel like I could just lay in a corner and fall asleep directly,” said Kurapika, moving on down the hall to another room. “The sofa in here is fine. Or well, it’s hideous and terrible, but no-one’s ripped it apart yet. Still very much wallowing in its misery that no-one’s been kind enough to take it out of.”

Leorio laughed at the surprising fount of sarcastic humor that Kurapika could be while drunk. This humor had even managed to charm a few girls, though Kurapika had been remarkably blind to it. Apparently this was how Kurapika’s brain interpreted the alcohol’s mandate that he “lighten up” or something, and it made him a surprisingly bearable drunk. Drunk, Kurapika was honest and occasionally funny. Sober, he could be a snobbish asshole, but he infused it with a condescending politeness that switched on and off enough times to let you know that whenever he made a biting comment, he really, truly meant it to hurt you. Drunk, Kurapika didn’t seem to give enough of a fuck to keep up the pretense of being polite all the time and just let his bitterness flow free. Sober, he was probably secretly ridiculing everyone around him and quipping silently to himself in his mind, keeping his vitriolic gifts from the world in order to get along.

“Lay on the floor directly and you’ll wake up an hour directly later with searing back and shoulder pains,” said Leorio as he joined Kurapika in the next room. He sighed heavily as he surveyed their only option. Fortunately, it was the larger of the two sofas that had been spared destruction. Leorio now suspected that the other had been destroyed while his uncle had been in town. His uncle had likely used the large sofa, resulting in Leorio’s nephews not having the nerve to annihilate it along with its narrower companion. In fact, they’d probably wrecked the other poor sofa in a boyish rage, upset that they’d been relegated to the smaller, more threadbare option when they were two and their father was one. They’d taken those emotions out on the furniture and household junk, and now, no-one with guests could sleep anywhere unless they shared.

“I’ll sleep in the car,” volunteered Leorio.

“You’re too tall for that to be comfortable,” said Kurapika. “I will.”

“They say height is half of beauty.”

“What?” asked Kurapika, turning to look up at Leorio. Leorio went to sit on the edge of the sofa, preferring not to stand as the alcohol sloshed around in his belly and seeped slowly into his brain. He was no longer sweating it out with dancing, and now it was beginning to settle inside him.

“It means your cute, boyish charm is literally overshadowed by my sheer altitude,” said Leorio as he leaned into the sofa and placed his arms behind the back of it, slouching until his fingers nearly grazed the floor. The couch had been made for a demographic born two generations ago, and two generations ago malnutrition and war had been so rampant that everyone had been stunted in their growth. Thus, it didn’t take much for Leorio’s long arms draped behind him to reach the floor. He was a giant standing amidst the elderly, both in their advanced ages as well as in their dementia-forgotten youths. People openly marveled at his stature, the word “strapping” had been used, and Leorio had grown to identify himself with the accidental accomplishment that was his height so much that he’d started to inadvertently hunch his shoulders as an unspoken indication of his mood when it was low.

“But you’re disproportional,” said Kurapika bluntly, “and you have many weak points.”

“What? Well, that’s not what girls care about, okay?”

“But if your beauty is halfway determined by your height, then you’ve only won half the battle.”

“I have other traits. I’m also handsome, charming and stylish.”

“No, you’re just tall.”

Leorio inclined an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“So we’re both at 50-percent. I’m shorter but cuter. You’re tall and…well, you’re just tall.”

Leorio scoffed, but lacked a witty retort. Instead, he sat up and said he’d bring a blanket up for Kurapika from the car. This wasn’t the first time Leorio had been forced to rough it a night in his vehicle, and he’d come prepared. Kurapika could have the blanket, though, because inside the house was cooler than outside, and Kurapika was Leorio’s guest. Kurapika tried to say his jacket would be enough. Leorio assured him that it wouldn’t be.

When Leorio came back with the blankets, Kurapika was already laying supine over the the uneven padding of the dusty sofa. Apparently the drunken urge to sleep for all eternity had overcome him despite his protesting earlier that Leorio ought to be the one to sleep where Kurapika currently lay. He’d probably thought he was going to rest a bit, close his eyes a moment while he waited, and in that short act had fallen dead asleep.

Leorio smiled softly as he knelt alongside the sofa and began to unfurl the tightly rolled blankets, little more than bed sheets really, that he’d carried up with him. His shin ached dully from his drunkenly missing a step on his way back up the stairs, but fortunately Kurapika had drifted off before then and wasn’t sitting up waiting to ridicule Leorio for Leorio’s utter inability to use stairs while tipsy. It was shameful how much Leorio had demonstrated this tendency since meeting Kurapika only a week ago.

“I heard you shout,’ said Kurapika dully, his eyes closed and his breath forced as he struggled against his inability to fully handle how drunk and muddle-minded he was feeling.

“There was a bat that flew in my face downstairs,” Leorio lied, placing a hand on Kurapika’s shoulder to turn Kurapika towards him a little so he could better assess Kurapika’s condition. Leorio’s expert medical student diagnosis? Drunk as fuck. Unsurprisingly. Kurapika was going to have a terrible morning in about six hours. That was why Leorio had also brought up two tall, liter bottles of water and a packet of pain medicine. It was going to be important to get Kurapika hydrated again later. Kurapika was about to suffer the worst headache he’d ever known in an entire nineteen years worth of life.

“This was a bad choice,” said Kurapika, lifting his arms up so he could press on his temples with his palms and hold himself steady, although outwardly he wasn’t moving at all. “This was stupid.”

“I’m glad you see that yourself,” said Leorio. He pressed his hand against Kurapika’s forehead on instinct, though he new damn well Kurapika didn’t have a fever. “There are ways to learn how to drink. Downing entire glasses of wine and cola isn’t the smartest one.”

“I can’t even tell know how I feel exactly, physically or emotionally,” said Kurapika, like he was somehow taking notes on all this. Like this was a scientific study he was undergoing, just like the lunch with his coworker weeks ago. Leorio supposed this was the weird way aloof little Kurapika processed new experiences, analyzing all the novelty out of them until he got some kind of handle on everything.

Kurapika placed his hands in front of him as he spoke and was open and closing them, wiggling his fingers and squinting at them like they were hard for him to see. Leorio suspect they probably were. It was dark here, and Kurapika couldn’t focus his vision well. It was oddly hilarious watching him try to reassert control over a situation that it was already long beyond lost to him. Kurapika couldn’t just sit there and be drunk like a normal person, no, he had to _understand_ it. _Ruin_ it. Comprehend it at a detached distance looking in, and panic at the realization that he couldn’t will himself back into sobriety now that the actual drinking part of getting drunk was over.

“I don’t like this at all,” muttered Kurapika miserably. Or well, he was trying to perhaps mutter. He was much too loud though. Probably because he couldn’t hear himself speaking very well at this point, couldn’t accurately adjust his volume. “Why do people do this? Sure, dancing and looking like an idiot were much easier after the first drink….”

“…but after the other three?” asked Leorio, laughing under his breath the entire time he observed Kurapika. “Lie down and sleep. It’s a good idea to try, even if you won’t be able to stay asleep completely.”

“I’m not that tired now. But, I do feel weak.”

“It’s the alcohol. It has a sedative effect, but the process of breaking it down keeps you awake, along with the caffeine in the soda. It’s a shitty mix of being lifted up and thrown back down over and over at this point. Your body would probably appreciate it if you slept, though. You’ll want to sleep again eventually.”

“There’s a lot, conflictingly, that I feel like I want to do right now.”

Leorio’s bemused smiled faded when Kurapika’s near hand then reached up and clasped the fabric of his shirt, like Kurapika was trying to anchor himself with Leorio’s presence. Like Kurapika was of a mind to bring Leorio closer. Leorio swallowed nervously.

“I want….”

Something in Kurapika’s voice implied that a few of the things Kurapika wanted were not merely the drunken mainstays of die of shame, throw up, or sleep like the dead. Instead, they were things that, when they visibly crossed Kurapika’s mind, made Kurapika’s breath catch and his grip tighten. Kurapika pulled Leorio a tiny bit closer, perhaps because a drunk Kurapika had little time for persuasion or deliberation, and simply made it clear directly to Leorio what Kurapika’s body was telling him it wanted. Automatically, Leorio felt himself mirror the sentiment in a sort of opportunistic mating instinct that urged him to see what he could get away with. He asked himself if Kurapika was following a similar instinct, if somehow Leorio had inadvertently given himself away and revealed too obviously that he might be into this kind of thing.

For a moment, Leorio was far too focused on asking himself what he’d done that night that had tipped Kurapika off to Leorio’s attraction to Kurapika to the point that Kurapika’s uninhibited drunk self was making moves on Leorio. So much for being subtle and agonizing in secret, then. Leorio had always had more than just a soft spot for men with cute faces. But, Leorio knew how to keep that from interfering with a platonic friendship. Women had always been easier to get involved with, which was fine because he liked them, too. Women always expected you to go after them because that was the supposedly normal, eternal thing. Being attracted to a man you barely knew was nothing like attraction to a woman. Men didn’t normally expect other men to be attracted to them. You had to be so much more careful.

Kurapika, of course, was too fucking drunk to know how to even define the world careful. He was too drunk to even find it in the damn dictionary.

Leorio quickly removed himself from contact with Kurapika, because Leorio wasn’t drunk enough yet to listen to the horny voice in his head that told him to follow Kurapika’s rather clumsy lead. Leorio doubted he was responsible or sober enough to handle a drunk Kurapika for long. It was perhaps best that Leorio went down to the car now and left Kurapika alone. But, Kurapika’s actions also sort of begged the question of if Kurapika was even safe to leave. He was like a kid right now, an adult-shaped kid who was feeling a lot of weird shit all at once and couldn’t think straight.

It was beyond Leorio’s depth. Leorio had never coached anyone, especially someone he was attracted to, through their first drunken experience. In fact, he was stunned that he was being called upon to preform such a task even now, even while it was actually happening. Kurapika kept referring to Leorio as something of an expert, sharing his observations like he was maybe hoping Leorio would take them down for him. Because what was the point of getting good and drunk if you didn’t fucking learn something from it, right? Everything was a teachable moment, and Kurapika was an astute student of life who never missed a lesson.

“Uh, well, you can’t pick and choose which urges are going to dominate when your inhibitions drop,” said Leorio in a voice he hoped was knowledgeable and detached, properly scientific for this most wasted of experiments Kurapika was preforming. “If you’ll notice, your senses are probably dulled. Your hearing is definitely weaker, because you’re talking kind of loud. Everything is probably a bit foggy. You might feel aroused because I’m so handsome and all, and I’m taking such awesome care of you—“

Kurapika reached up and grabbed Leorio, as in properly grabbed him without any real concern for Leorio’s stance on this. Leorio, his own reflexes dulled by the alcohol he’d consumed in much greater quantity but with more built up tolerance than Kurapika, allowed himself to be pulled down once more to Kurapika’s level, where Kurapika kissed him sloppily and hungrily. Kurapika kissed him as only the truly drowned and senseless could manage, those who were following the guiding light of an urge inside them that didn’t speak but only compelled one forward in earnest with a blind optimism that it would be embraced in return by the object of desire. Kurapika’s hands were wrapped around Leorio’s head, fingers clinging around the curve of his nape and skull, kind of hurting Leorio’s neck a little to be honest. Kurapika didn’t seem all that aware that Leorio’s kissable face had a whole body attached to it.

Without thinking, Leorio pulled back a little to remove his teashades and place them in relatively safety on the floor. Kurapika hardly let him do even this small thing before pulling him closer and resuming with kisses. Leorio smiled wryly against Kurapika’s mouth, though Kurapika kissed the curled back lips anyway, just as much as he’d kissed the ones that had met his with equal vigor initially. Leorio gave a few of the kisses back, but couldn’t stop laughing behind them. What seemed so damn funny was that, truthfully, it was never one dramatic, slow motion kiss spun around at all perfect angles like in a movie or a music video the first time. Instead, kisses were kind of a mess, a chain of eager embraces looped together, especially when there was drinking involved. Once you tasted someone you desired, you couldn’t very easily stop, but must immediately try again and again and so forth, forever. It was a window of opportunity to be firmly grasped in order to abate the suffocating fear that it might not come by again. This had to count and last as long as possible, because the circumstances leading up to it might never again repeat themselves in just the right way.

Instinctively, Leorio wrapped his arms more tightly around Kurapika, pulling him even closer than Kurapika had already brought them. For a moment, Leorio lost himself in the act of returning each sloppy, hungry kiss with redoubled enthusiasm. He wanted this contact desperately. He needed something to hold onto and keep close to him, to fill long hours and reassure him he wasn’t forever hopeless and alone. I would be great if this were truly more than the reality of the situation; that Kurapika was drunk and uninhibited and not handling well the fact that the loosening of his reserve resulted in a surge of unfiltered, visceral urges that were maybe not in line with his best self.

As the more sober of the two, it fell on Leorio to be the responsible one and stop this. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to greedily enjoy it for a few more seconds. When he felt a hand slip under the shirt, Leorio finally released his grip and pushed Kurapika the incredible length of his arms away and held him there. He looked in Kurapika’s face and saw Kurapika’s eyes were hardly open.

“You are drunk,” said Leorio gently, a bit breathless still. “Lie down and sleep. You can lie next to me, but no more than that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too late,” lied Leorio and looked away. “I’m tired, and we should sleep.” He paused, and then added as if trying to convince Kurapika of the fact: “You are drunk.”

Kurapika nodded. He looked around blearily and leaned back, slipping from Leorio’s hands as he went to take the blanket from the foot of the bed.

“If you knew there were two of us, why did you bring only one blanket?”

“That’s two blankets rolled together. They’re thin to pack easier.”

“Oh, yeah, I see that now,” said Kurapika, pulling the blankets apart. He took one and wrapped it around his shoulders and then lay down. “Goodnight.”

In moments, he was asleep, or something drunkenly similar to it.

The only optimistic thought Leorio had left was that at least Kurapika had expressed interest. Perhaps too much, but it was hard to say if all of the sentiment came from Kurapika himself, or the invincible character occupying the fantastic vision of the world that alcohol had skewed everything into in Kurapika’s mind. In the drunk world, actions didn’t really seem to have viable consequences. Consequences became boogeymen, a story told by responsible adults to keep you from endangering yourself just in case there was a monster roaming the woods after dark. Now, you were a grown-up yourself and knew that those stories had just been scare tactics to keep you in line. Now, you were drunk and treating all advice, even the good advice, like the same scare tactic to keep you from having too good a time on the seemly distant off-chance that your good time might take a turn for the worst.

Leorio didn’t want a connection that could be chalked up to a mere drunken decision made in the heat of a moment that was far too intense, polluted by too many stupefying factors that would keep both parties from admitting any of it had been real. Leorio felt too old for that kind of thing. He’d already been a teenager once; there was no use in repeating it for an excuse to be selfish and get off. And anyway, Kurapika wasn’t just some stranger who’d followed Leorio home like a lost dog. They were neighbors, dammit. They’d have to face each other passing in the vestibule and trapped in the occasional shared elevator ride when both were in too much of a hurry to wait for the elevator to make its circuit.

Maybe once Kurapika got better at drinking, Leorio would take Kurapika’s drunk self seriously when it asked him for these kinds of things. Right now, though, he needed to think for both of them, be responsible for both of them, because he was the one who’d let Kurapika get so bad in the first place by bringing him here and not keeping a keen enough eye on him. Kurapika was going to wake up feeling like enough shit already without adding complete and utter mortification with himself onto it.

Though he’d told Kurapika that they would lie side-by-side, Leorio had no real intention of joining Kurapika on the sofa. Instead, Leorio balled his blanket up like a pillow to support his head and sleep on the floor parallel to Kurapika on the sofa. The sofa wasn’t high up, so Leorio could see Kurapika fairly well above him. With a slow gesture of reluctant finality, he reached up once and buried his hand into the long, fine strands of Kurapika’s light hair. He ran his fingers through it a moment, feeling it a bit damp and greasy near the scalp because the alcohol and dancing had caused Kurapika to sweat. Kurapika made a soft, approving sound, which caused Leorio to smile to himself before he took his hand back and lay down to sleep.

Leorio sighed. He stupidly allowed himself a fleeting, heartbreaking moment to imagine that there was more to Kurapika’s actions than the effects of alcohol. That when Kurapika woke up, he’d want to kiss Leorio again, maybe. He’d carelessly smudge the lenses of Leorio’s teashades with the tip of his nose, leaving a gross, greasy smear. It would annoy Leorio a quarter of an hour or so later when he final noticed the blurry spot in his vision while glancing down to take Kurapika’s hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Endnote:** I guess the overarching theme of this work will be “exactly how drunk can I get these people and in how many places?” Although, for me, I’m just happy I got them to kiss in less than 50.000 words, because normally my approach to relationships in fanfic is endless chapters of interaction and zero payoff until the very end. Here, though, I decided to just swing open that gay shipping door right away. And yes, a nearly 10.000 word chapter for me constitutes as _right away_.


End file.
